


Strip/tease

by gingerfic



Series: An Alphabet of Samcedes Stories [19]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Waiters & Waitresses, samcedes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5098238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerfic/pseuds/gingerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Mercedes both work in a strip club: she waits tables and he’s on stage. They’re both very professional...until they aren’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strip/tease

**Author's Note:**

> This started off one direction, and then I got writer’s block...and then a couple of songs got me unblocked: [For Your Entertainment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsPFDzAGb4A) by Adam Lambert, and [Shiver Shiver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD63wVc57A8) by Walk the Moon. Of course, they also made me turn it in a new direction… I hope you like it. :)
> 
> as always, awesome beta by hkvoyage

Mercedes had been waitressing at the club for four years--head waitress for over a year--when the new guy started. She worked in a strip club and she was a professional; she didn’t get distracted by the dancers.

Until the day that she did.

\-----

Sam was proud of his body: he’d worked hard to get it this way. Stripping had never been something he had planned to do, but when singing and modeling weren’t panning out he decided that showbusiness was showbusiness, and a foot in the door is a foot in the door, so he went for it.

He felt a little awkward about it the first few times he stepped onto the stage. He had never done something quite like this, and he hoped that people would like him. He was glad that he wasn’t the only one out there, and for a fleeting moment he had the thought that maybe not too many people were looking and it made him less self-conscious… until he glanced up and saw a pair of dark eyes fixed on him from across the room.

\-----

Mercedes never meant to stare. Of course she didn’t. But he was so… He wasn’t like the other guys on the stage. Of course he had a good body and an attractive face like they always did. But he had something else too. There was a certain...vulnerability to his face. He didn’t seem to be trying to work the crowd, or be a star. She had the definite impression that he was just a guy on a stage, hoping that people would like him.

\-----

“Nice job tonight, New Guy,” that same dark-eyed waitress said to him later that night when they passed in the backstage hallway. “I’m Mercedes.”

“Sam.”

“You seem really sweet, not like some of the cocky S-O-Bs we get in here.”

“Um, thank you?”

“I’ve been here a while though, and sweet is adorable but it isn’t always safe.” She touched his arm and a shiver ran up it into his neck and made his ears ring. “If anybody ever gives you trouble, you let me know. I’ve got your back. Got it?”

Sam swallowed hard. “Right, ok, thanks.”

She looked him up and down. “I’m serious. Nobody messes with my boys here.”

\-----

It was a pretty standard spiel, actually. Most of the guys laughed and teased each other about the idea of a short waitress defending them from rowdy patrons, but that was because they didn’t know.

They didn’t know about all the times she had ‘accidentally’ spilled water on someone (right in their lap if they were really obnoxious) and thereby hurried them out the door (even if she’d lost a tip and sometimes had to pay for their meal herself). They didn’t know about the patrons who had gotten an extra drink or two “on the house” so that they’d relax and stay in their seats. They didn’t know about the return customers that she intentionally seated in the “special” seating in the back, where she told them that the view of the stage was more comfortable for their necks, and didn’t mention about how they wouldn’t be able to reach the dancers.

When Mercedes said that nobody messed with her boys, she meant it.

But when she said it to Sam, for some reason, she meant it twice as much.

\-----

Sam had been working at the club for about two weeks before he ran into Mercedes in the staff hallway again.

“Hi Sam,” she said casually as she approached. It was a long and narrow hallway behind the stage, bare cement with a few pipes running along one of the walls. The kitchen staff didn’t come back this way very often, but the back entrance of the building was out by the dressing rooms and sometimes people went that way.

“Hi, uh, Mercedes,” he stammered, internally berating himself for not being smoother. They didn’t really work  _ with _ each other, but she smiled at him across the room sometimes, and she just seemed so nice. Plus he had an image to maintain.

“Nice routine tonight,” she smiled slightly and her eyes twinkled. “That body roll is delicious,” she added in a whisper as she passed. The ends of her long hair brushed against his arm and he caught a whiff of her perfume, rich and warm, just like her.

\-----

_ Why did I go off and say that? _ Mercedes rolled her eyes to herself and reached for the exit door. She knew better. Flirting with the dancers was about as unprofessional as it got. She had  _ never _ talked to a co-worker that way before. But Sam was just… she didn’t even know what word to use. He was just Sam. And she had it bad.

She bit her lip, sucked in her breath, and went to her car. No touching. No more talking. They were co-workers, and it was always a bad idea to date co-workers.

\-----

Sam didn’t seem to understand that it was a bad idea to date co-workers. Well, he did--there was sort of an unspoken rule about it and he understood well enough. But flirting wasn’t dating, and what if he was a little more friendly with Mercedes than with anyone else he worked with? She had been nice to him, and she was as attractive as any of the female dancers (those curves!). He knew he’d have to be careful to keep it professional, but there’s nothing unprofessional about smiling at or talking to someone you work with, right?

\-----

It was another month before Sam did it. 

In retrospect, Mercedes should have seen it coming. He’d been flirting and she hadn’t shut him down like she always had with co-workers in the past. She knew she probably should stop it, but she just couldn’t bring herself to; so she kept brushing it off as nothing more than friendship. And then, one night, at the end of her shift when she was on her way down that narrow hallway to the back door, he made himself impossible to brush off anymore.

“Hey Mercedes?”

She stopped abruptly, surprised to see him in the dressing room doorway between her and the exit. The club had closed an hour ago and usually the performers left right away, but Mercedes had been on closing duty tonight so she had just gotten done.

“Sam? What are you still doing here?” She shivered with a sudden chill, not sure if it was a draft in the bare hallway or the effect of being in close proximity with someone she had been trying to avoid for weeks now.

“I waited for you,” he admitted bluntly.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’m here all night, you could have caught me anytime,” she said casually.

“I wanted to talk to you alone,” he clarified.

“Well, I’m here.” Her pulse had sped up and in the back of her mind she wondered if he could tell.

“Go out with me?”

\-----

Sam hadn’t been sure how she would respond, but he was tired of only flirting. He wanted to talk about something besides work or the weather. He wanted to touch her hand on purpose and see if it made him tingle the way their occasional accidental touches did. He really, really wanted to taste those plump lips.

\-----

Mercedes knew he wasn’t ready for her. Not in the least. So she said simply “I really can’t.” And then she hurried out the door.

It was only a week before he asked again.

She said something about her sister being in town and ran off again before he could suggest a different day. 

Sam was such a sweet guy; too nice for someone like her.

The week after that he asked again, and when she made another excuse, he asked her why.

“Fine, I’m sorry, I won’t ask anymore. I don’t want to be  that guy , but please will you just tell me why you won’t go out with me?”

Mercedes took a deep breath and tried to figure out the best way to explain it to him.

“It’s not that I don’t want to…” she bit her lip and tried to figure out the best way to explain it to him. “I just don’t think it would be a good idea.” 

“Did I do something wrong, Mercedes?” and oh, the pain in his eyes as he said it. “We’ve been flirting and dancing around each other ever since I got here. I thought we had something going here, and I really like you, and I’d really like to go out with you.”

“I don’t think I’m really your type, Sam.”

He squinted and raised an eyebrow as he stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She sighed. “Look, I like you, but I’m not like other girls, and I think that if you really knew who I was you might not want to go out with me.”

“I don’t care what it is, I do want--” Sam began, but Mercedes put a finger to his mouth and narrowed her eyes and he shut up.

“You may be White Chocolate, but I’m Dark Chocolate.”

“What?” he scrunched his eyebrows together and tilted his head a little.

“There ain’t nothin vanilla in here,” she clarified, gesturing down her body.

“Oh.”

Sam squinted for a moment, then his eyes grew wide as understanding dawned.

Oh!

Then he looked her right in the eyes, and said, “I’m in.”

\-----

While Sam had never thought to look for a dominating woman, he found that he actually quite liked it; at least with Mercedes. The main thing he liked was that it was so clearly her natural temperament. He couldn’t imagine Mercedes being mild or passive. She was a woman who was meant to be in charge, and it carried easily from her job to their developing relationship. 

It took conversations--a lot of them--before Sam and Mercedes settled out the details. She was insistent that she be able to call the shots in some aspects of their relationship, but she was equally insistent that Sam be completely comfortable with it all, and that he speak up if he wasn’t. Weirdly, although Sam knew it was technically a dominant/submissive relationship, it was probably the most egalitarian relationship he’d ever been in.

He wasn’t allowed to touch her in public, and it drove him crazy (even though it made it all the better when they finally got alone and he could let out his pent-up affections). But Mercedes was allowed to touch Sam whenever she wanted: and she did so.

“All mine,” she murmured softly in his ear as he pulled on his jacket on the way to the stage. Her hand trailed along his hip and gave a quick squeeze to his ass as he passed her.

Yeah, there was nothing quite as sexy as that.

\-----

Mercedes had certainly never thought she’d find a lover at work. The only guys there were the dancers, and what male stripper wants to come home and be submissive to his waitress girlfriend? But apparently she had been right on the first day she saw him: Sam Evans wasn’t like the other guys. 

Which worked out perfectly, because Mercedes Jones wasn’t like the other girls.

**Author's Note:**

> "Bet you thought that I was soft and sweet; you thought an angel swept you off your feet. Well I'm about to turn up the heat, I'm here for your entertainment!"
> 
> "When you are close to me I shiver..."


End file.
